Kitchen Update: Plywood Counters are the newest rage!

I remember the day that I walked into our house for the first time.  It was a hot mess. . . But not nearly as bad as some of the homes that we had walked through a year before when our home search initially began.  All the details of the home were just not my style, in a time, where I wasn’t sure what my style was, but I knew that wasn’t it. Yellowish linoleum that had a cut through the center of it (not a joke), green ivy wallpaper AND border, baby poop brown cabinets.  It just wasn’t my style.  My husband and his friend (also our realtor) kept telling me “It has such great bones.”  Look past the wallpaper and just eve the house as a skeleton and look at it’s potential.  A short time later, we had the keys to our house and moved in the week of Christmas.

 The reality was our budget didn’t leave room for a new build or a fancy remodel, but it did check off a few of our boxes.  We had just celebrated the first birthday of our first born and I had quit my job to stay at home with Ethan. Jon was working his day job and teaching math classes online. We dreamt of having a master bathroom with 2 sinks, 3 bedrooms, a separate dining room, and if we could make it work, we wanted a living room and family room. If you asked me back then, I probably wouldn’t have told you that I loved my house, but I can now.

Over the years, we’ve been able to slowly make some deliberate changes to our home to make it more welcoming as our budget has allowed. You can find more about our home story here. One of the biggest things we’ve dreamed about is our kitchen.  We were so lucky that came with some great white square tile counters (minus the disgusting grout. . . Or what’s left of the grout), so we had previously painted the cabinets, redid the flooring, painted, and added wainscoting.  However, our stove top had been on it last life (only 1 and a half burners really worked. . . Probably the original 1966 stovetop!).  We have dreamed and saved and dreamed and saved and finally, we started ordering new appliances for our kitchen and stock piling them in our garage. . . 2021 was a hard year for getting things in in a decent time frame and last summer finally met with a Contractor and Kitchen designer, who is actually a friend and let me give her my vision and let me go with it.  She made it happen, with all her technical skills and experience.  So last month, while we were hanging out in Disneyland, they came in and removed all the old countertops and some appliances.  (Insert VERY happy dance from me here!)

 As I write this, I am sitting in a local Starbucks drinking coffee because my kitchen has exploded into all areas of our house.  Redoing a kitchen (or any room for the matter) is definitely a process that teaches you to be patient.  It definitely doesn’t happen lickitly split like it does on tv, because they edit all the in between stuff out.  Currently, we are in a period of waiting.  Demo is finished, but waiting on the granite installer to be ready to do his thing.  On average this part of the process seems to take about 3 weeks.  Our neighbors are just a few weeks ahead of us on their kitchen projects, with it is with a different contractor and it’s the same time frame.  So, if all goes according to plan, granite will be installed tomorrow!  And then, we can get the contractor to come out and install everything and start our backsplash. 

In the meantime, we are enjoying our plywood counters. . . I think we will start a new trend.  This afternoon, I might take some time to write some scripture on them before they get installed.  Anyone have a verse they want to put on?  Throw it down in the comments! 

Needless to say, we are getting really creative around here.  Jon says we are saving so much time not having to empty the dishwasher, because the water to our kitchen has been shut off. . . The sink isn’t set up quite yet. . . Gotta wait for those countertops!  I am getting to be really great friends with our grill and am so thankful for cast iron skillets!  We also have been taking advantage our our Onni pizza oven (I froze lots of pizza dough in preparation for this!).  I am so glad that the weather has been pretty great because it has been nice to be able to cook outside and not have to eat take out every night! 

 I can’t wait to post more updates, because I think that things will start moving more quick as the week progresses.  Follow me on Instagram to see what’s happening this week in my stories. . . it's exciting! .

Also, If you are curious about the history of our kitchen check out this post.